NHIS should cover dialysis cost – Oppong Nkrumah

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Minister of Information, voiced concerns about the exorbitant cost of treatment for renal patients in the country.

He emphasized the need for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to absorb some of the expenses incurred by renal patients during dialysis sessions, which have been straining the finances of kidney patients.

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah stressed the importance of adequately financing the NHIS Fund to ensure that it can cover aspects of renal treatment costs.

"The government is waiting on the management of Korle Bu to complete its internal work and come forward with what its position is. The conversation has been going on, and I personally suggested that whatever the amount comes to, it is a matter that the NHIS Fund should be able to pick up. To achieve that, we need to take a lot more seriously the financing of the NHIS Fund to take up incidents like this. The amount is not something an individual will be able to cater for considering the number of dialysis one has to go through in a month, without draining their finances extensively," citinewsroom quoted the minister.

Nkrumah also expressed concern over the lack of remittances into the NHIS Fund since its inception by former President John Agyekum Kufuor.

He recommended automating the collection of funds on behalf of the Fund to eliminate potential loopholes.

"Today, the non-Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) contributor is paying GHC28 as an annual premium, and the SSNIT contributor is paying GHC8 as an annual premium; this is woefully inadequate. The NHIS levy that is collected on behalf of the NHIS Fund is not automatically remitted to the NHIS Fund. I believe that is something we also have to look at. We have never remitted 100% to the Fund since its introduction by former President Kufuor. I don't think it's honestly proper for us to collect monies in the name of the Fund and not remit those monies to the Fund. And it's something both the National Democratic Congress and New Patriotic Party have been doing since the days of former President Kufuor. We need to bring some automaticity to the amount of monies we collect on behalf of the Fund. If you do it this way, we can have money from the Fund that can take care of these costs," he opined.

The Renal Patients Association recently disclosed that 14 outpatients of the renal unit at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital lost their lives after the unit was closed to them in May 2023.

A spokesperson for the association, Michael Asante, revealed that the deaths were attributed to the patients' inability to access dialysis treatment at private dialysis centers, which is more expensive than the treatment offered at the hospital.

Patients seeking dialysis treatment at the Renal Unit were facing a new fee of GH¢765, a significant increase from the initial fee of GH¢385.

In response to the uproar, the Ministry summoned the management of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to explain why the new fee was introduced without due process, prompting intense criticism of the hospital's dialysis charge review.

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